Sacramento Road trip photos

I posted the pictures from my drive to Sacramento, CA. It’s a shame that I had a timetable to hold to as it would have been nice to make a few stops along the way. Normally I find long road trips relaxing. My brain is always on overdrive and driving seems to bring my thoughts into focus. “Motorized meditation” is my own personal fad.

This trip was a little different. First, I had a deadline to meet so when I wasn’t pushing 100mph on the highway, I was either refueling, eating or taking a quick nap. Second, Geoff’s Acura was the most uncomfortable car I have ever driven. It might go fast & handle well, but give me an SUV for long trips.

Dallas Winter

While I was trekking cross-country a severe cold weather system left Dallas iced over for two days. I actually passed through the storms during my drive to Sacramento (who would expect 3 inches of snow in Albuquerque, New Mexico?) and I was happy that I didn’t get delayed longer while sitting at Sacramento International Airport. Can someone explain to me why the south doesn’t bother to salt their roads and thinks dumping tons of sand makes the least bit of difference?

Despite the weather and a slight migraine Michelle & I ventured out last night to join Jen, Jes & Co. They were properly heckled for having their celebration on a week night which prevented us responsible people (ok, older folks) from partying to the level expected at such an event. We hung out for a couple of hours drinking & gabbing with everyone, but made it an early night as I was still whipped from my two day trip. (Those pictures should go up tonight after class)

I’ve decided that I need to buy another camera specifically for outings like last night. While the quality of the new Olympus is unmatched, it certainly is not user-friendly for whipping up spontaneous action footage. Jen grabbed some pics on her digital camera and I’ll bug her for copies to post here.

Happy Birthday Jen & Jes!!!

Hey all you local Dallas peoples, head out to Have A Nice Day Cafe tonight and help the Wonder Twins celebrate their birthday!

I just got back from Sacramento. A detailed account of my road trip and the trials of attempting to fly home will be posted later. Right now I need food, a HUGE dose of Tylenol and some rest.

Goin’ to Cali…

Evening everyone.

Well, I’d love to sit here and tell ya that I just purchased this sweet ride, but truth is I’m makin’ a delivery for my buddy Geoff. As he just upgraded to a Saleen convertible the wheels behind got auctioned off on Ebay and somebody in Sacramento, CA made the final bid. I’ll be off in the morning to make the two day road trip. Don’t know what I’ll do without `Net access for a few days. Michelle thinks I’ll suffer major withdrawals, but I’ll probably just make a case for mobile access when I get back. Hmmm… a new PDA sounds kinda cool.

Have a great week and I’ll have some pictures from the trip up in a few days.

Spurs Lose

I’m sitting in class at the moment (gotta love `Net access on campus) so no barrage of posts from me today. Michelle & I went to the Mavericks/Spurs game last night. Our first live game in Dallas and unfortunately Michelle’s Spurs just didn’t play well. We thought with a 9 road-game winning streak the game would really be a shootout, but no such luck. The Spurs were flat from the onset.

It was a lot of fun to actually be at a game, but we would have enjoyed it more if the Spurs had won.

Oops, just a minor design flaw…

Well, in my haste to get the layout changed and rewrite all the Frames pages, Ron pointed out last night that if you’re viewing this site at 800×600 then you probably missed the navigation at the top right of this page. DOH. Going to have to rethink that.

I really hate having to dumb down the site, but it’s silly to exclude potential viewers. So I have yet another change to crank out sometime this morning.

Sarah as an excellent entry posted this morning. Go read it now!

The Future of Sprint PCS Picture Phones

OK, I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought I could get in front of a Sprint Executive and sell them on my big idea. Actually, it’s not THAT bright a light bulb, but rather a statement of the obvious. So here goes…

If Sprint, T-Mobile & company want to gain some market share with their new picture phones then they should pay attention to what bloggers & the webcam community are doing. Right now you can only use e-mail to send a picture, but if these companies were smart they would quickly integrate FTP or some other protocol so a cell phone would act much like a webcam EXCEPT it would be totally wireless.

Sure if you have a laptop or PDA you can upload a digital picture then use some wireless interface to connect said device to the `Net, but who’s actually going to be carrying all that hardware when a really cool spontaneous moment happens? Imagine if you could post a picture from anywhere within 60 seconds, now that’s something. Maybe the quality of the pictures isn’t great, but who cares - CAM GIRLS get all kinds of traffic regardless of the technology they use.

Getting the most out of your wireless plan will be tough. They’ll have to incorporate more minutes as I’m sure some cutting edge porn site will get the idea that they can do mobile peep shows and the like. Of course the government would then be forced to write a law stating “picture taking using a cell phone while operating a motor vehicle will be punishable by stoning said stupid person”… but I digress.

I’m sure there is a way to incorporate picture phones now, but we’re talking a whole lot of programming overhead just to post a picture on a website. Well, I’ve rambled enough. Time to get some dinner then kick back in front of the TV for a while. Be sure to let Sprint know where to send the royalty checks… yeah, like that will happen.

Changes Done For The Moment…

Whew! Finally got some serious updates done. Fixed the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) issues with the Photo Gallery and now that my site is not in Frames anymore you folks will just have to get used to using the Back button more frequently.

I’ve hardcoded the outbound links to your left so there won’t be anymore notification when those sites have been updated. I’m still deciding whether I’ll go back to blogrolling the links, but I’ve added a short website review for each site. (Check the top link with the red star) I thought that might be helpful for those of you looking for something new.

Now I just have to work on adding photos to the gallery.

Yup, I’ve got more work to do.

OK, this post has been written to send the obligatory Monday morning ping to the blogosphere.

I did spend most of the morning working on updating my outbound links. I haven’t posted the changes yet as I want to completely finish this current set rather than make a few updates each day.

Looks like most of the site links are working. I’ve got to fix the Photo Gallery as the colors are off and I need to add navigation links back to the home page. I think the site worked better in Frames, BUT I am trying to wean myself from that crutch as best I can.

Have plenty of errands to take care of now, but I’ll be back later with some updates.

MOVIE REVIEW - DAREDEVIL

OK, so as Mich3lle is a HUGE fan of Jennifer Garner from Alias and also reads the Elektra comics series from Marvel, I was one of the lucky men who got to take their lady out to an action picture for Valentine’s Day. (Yeah me!) Needless to say, even without high expectations of the film, we were disappointed.

First let me say that I am not a fan of the new cinematography style in action pictures, primarily the fight sequences. All the action is shot up close, from odd angles so you never really get a good look at what is going on. Through the clanging & whooshing sound effects the camera changes rapidly pausing only to give you a taste of the action. I guess the technical appeal is that a rather mediocre fight scene becomes something of legend, but I don’t want to see MTV style footage when watching an action picture. Daredevil is burdened even more as all the fights took place at night or in dark lighting. It could have very well been The Musketeer.

Another problem is the action sequences were too short and too few. Given the fact that the primary characters were all of the same skill level, I expected each confrontation to build upon the previous. No such luck. The only sequence that was entertaining was the playground courtship between Elektra & Matt (DD’s plain clothes guise). Later on in the film when Elektra confronts Daredevil, she disposes of him pretty quickly and yet is overwhelmingly outmatched against the assassin Bullseye. Daredevil puts up a better fight injured which is a little odd considering how Elektra cleaned his clock.

The storyline showed promise, but there was too much information to truly develop the characters in under two hours. Daredevil’s alter ego Matt Murdock falls flat, mainly because of the writing and I didn’t feel Ben Afleck brought as much to the character as Toby Maguire did to Peter Parker in Spiderman. I thought the backstory in Spiderman and the characters outside their costumes were very well done compared to the storyline in Daredevil. Anyone familiar with the Daredevil comic series knows that the movie tried to compact several years worth of character development & history. The love story between Elektra & Daredevil alone could have been one movie. I thought Spiderman, even though it deviated from the comic somewhat, took more time to truly develop the characters.

A few positives from the film include Collin Farrell as Bullseye. He could have used some better lines, but the look & the edge were definitely there. Also there are two scenes where Matt uses his “radar sense” to see Elektra. The first scene shot in the rain on a rooftop is well done, the special effects worked out very well, but a scene later in the movie is even more compelling. It’s raining once again and just as Matt can begin to see the outline of Elektra’s face she steps underneath an umbrella and disappears. I thought that was a great moment in the film.

I’m not sure if a sequel is slated for DD, but I’m hoping they opt for less special effects and more story next time around.

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